1st of 40: Carley Rae Jepsen

In an effort to keep my creative juices flowing after coming back from ICON7 in Providence, Rhode Island. I have decided to do a drawing a day for 40 days. Now as most of you know this can be very daunting task to keep up but I believe by setting this goal for myself I will keep my hand in the game and hopefully improve my "famous people" drawing skills. For this challenge I have decided to do the US Billboard top 40 which this day just happens to be a woman by the name of Carley Rae Jepsen who is blowing up the charts with her bubble gum pop song, "Call me Maybe"

Monterey Bay Aquarium Illustration Job!!

So I was contacted a couple weeks ago by the web team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They'd seen my work on the kid's menus in the restaurant there and wanted to gauge my interest about some possible illustration work for them. Apparently kid's visiting the MBA website can download and print coloring pages at home. I jumped at the chance and signed a contract for 6 pages to replace some of the more dated ones that exist already. I submitted some of my sketches already and they received good reviews from the web team and now are being checked for accuracy by the husbandry department. Here are some of the sketches I did for the sunfish and great white shark.

Finished! mostly..

So I finished my niece's mural and it's pretty sweet. I understand she looks at it constantly and I think that is awesome. I hope it lasts a long time but who knows with kids, right?. I loved doing it and would be happy to do it again for anyone interested and within a 150 mile radius of where I reside.

My Future Niece's Mural

So I finally started the mural for my brother and his first daughter. My brother and wife wanted dinosaurs, so dinosaurs are what I gave them. It took me about 2 and a half hours to sketch the image on the wall, using a basic graphing method and a lot of stepping back to make sure things were in the right place. I woke up the morning after feeling ready to start painting and with a short trip to the hardware store was able to procure thirteen 2 oz. sample containers of different colored paints, thirteen of foam brushes (for zero cleaning) and some rags for the occasional drip. I was surprised at the number of colors available in those sample selections and found all the colors I needed with no problem. I then went back to my brother's house and got to work.

Here is the first layer of paint where I found out that the yellow and the darker colors (deep green, browns and blue in this case) would take 3 or more coats to look decent. I worked in a way that made it possible to hit those areas as soon as they dried so as not to lose momentum. I still haven't finished but here is the mural as it stands with most of the big areas of color blocked in.

I can't believe i haven't posted anything for the entire year of 2011. It's a big year for my brother and his wife who are having their first baby and in honor of that event I am painting a mural for them. Here is the design and hopefully I will post pictures of the final mural after completion.

Fevre Dream Ilustration

I'm reading this great book called Fevre Dream. I'm not very far into it but it seems to revolve around a ferry boat aptly named the Fevre Dream and a bunch of vampires both good and evil. Trying to rely less on preliminary drawing and going straight to ink. Then playing a lot in Photoshop.

Illustration Friday: Mail

New style! Decided to go without a preliminary sketch. Turned out okay, I think.